Best Adventure Movies of 1928

After killing her treacherous step-father, a girl tries to escape the country with a young vagabond. She dresses as a boy, they hop freight trains, quarrel with a group of hobos, and steal a car in their attempt to escape the police, and reach Canada.

While Joel and his older ship's captain brother Mark are at sea, the latter is abandoned in Singapore by devious ship's mate Finch who, upon their return, convinces the townspeople that Joel abandoned his brother. Joel, determined to not only find Mark but to see justice done, returns the ship to Singapore.

Monty Banks gets involved in tracking down a stolen fortune, his adventures culminating in a whirlwind, gag-filled climax at sea.

Fortune hunters from all over the country rushing to the Klondike in 1897 to seek their fortunes in the gold are tested by hardships of the journey.

Two sailors with a rivalry over chasing women become friends. But when one decides to finally settle down, will this mysterious young woman come between them?

In this historical adventure based on traditional legend concerning Leif Ericsson and the first Viking settlers to reach North America by sea, Norse half-brothers vie for a throne and for the same woman.

Elam "Burning Daylight" Harnish is a prospector who makes a million dollars in the Dawson, Alaska gold rush and loses the million dollars in Dawson. He journeys to San Francisco, makes three million dollars and loses it in San Francisco. He returns to Alaska and eventually finds his treasure.

Jimmy Bradley, a fireman on the old locomotive No. 99, loves Kate Murphy, daughter of the proprietress of the local lunch counter. His rival, Bat Mullins, is engineer of the new mail train scheduled to make a competition run. When Mullins overturns the new train, Bradley completes the run and earns the contract for his company by delivering the mail in record time on No. 99. A promotion to engineer helps him win Kate.

So This is Love? was another early Frank Capra production for fledgling Columbia Pictures. The hero, dress designer Jerry McGuire (William Collier Jr.), is tired of being considered a wimp. After business hours, Jerry secretly takes boxing lessons, enabling him to knock the stuffings out of his burly rival Spike Mullins (Johnnie Walker). Jerry's newfound pugilistic skills wins him the affections of store clerk Hilda Jensen (Shirley Mason), who's just car-razy about "cave men." Filmed in a fast three weeks, So This is Love? was completed before Frank Capra's Matinee Idol but released afterward. Leading lady Shirley Mason was the sister of Viola Dana, who starred in Capra's initial Columbia effort, That Certain Thing.

Two eager young pilots at flight school compete over their flight instructor's aviatrix sister.

Rinty rescues heroine June and hero Pat from all manner of desert dangers, both natural and man-made. The film's high point of tension finds the canine star rescuing Nye from a deep pit.

This film concerns a youth torn between his fatherly gangland mentor and the beautiful, virtuous daughter of a police detective.

A modern range war -- modern for 1928 -- complete with oil derricks in the backyard, horsemen being pursued by motorcyclists, and there's stunt flyer Al Wilson to save the day.

Rin-Tin-Tin's first sound feature, in which he plays an abused dog recused by a young girl in the far north.

During the American Civil War, A Union-Army officer is ordered by U. S. President Abraham Lincoln to bring in Belle Starr, the leader of a Missouri guerrilla band, dead or alive. However, he falls in love with her, does not bring her in, and is facing a court-martial.

A British army unit sets out to rescue the son of a maharajah, who has been kidnapped by a rebel group.

The film is about a desert-bound member of the French Foreign Legion who exposes a betrayer to the Legion and is then sent on a mission among the Arabs to conclude the signing of a crucial peace treaty.

1928 was the last year when silent films dominated the market, and this aviation-based action serial from Pathe was one of the studio's last. Some pieces are no longer extant (half of chapters 3&6, all of 7, 8, and 9, and the beginning of the 10th and final chapter), but the beginning and end are there as well as enough to follow the action adequately. The surviving Grapevine print is beautifully restored and tinted in spots, although you can tell the print is deteriorated in some of the surviving sections. Basically, an inventor (Josef Swickard, in a role not unlike the one he later played in THE LOST CITY) has created a silencer/muffler for planes to silence any engine sounds, and the bad guys are out to steal the invention and put it to evil use.

Patience Winslow is an impulsive heiress who marries a much-older man whom she really doesn't love. While honeymooning on her yacht without her new husband, Patience is marooned on a desert island with handsome Captain Edmunds. Her head full of notions that she's gleaned from radio dramas and pulp novels, Patience demands that she and Edmunds enter into an in-name-only marriage, observing the responsibilities and proprieties of matrimony without the sexual entanglements. Complications naturally arise.

Blockade was one of those curious 1929 hybrids known as a "part-talkie." The story of a dauntless female prohibition agent. In her pursuit of a gang of Florida rum-runners, Bess assumes three identities. At various junctures, she is "herself," a society belle and a gangster's moll.

Molly O'Day and her brother, Josh, are homesteading on and trying to make a living on a piece of government land, but local rancher Dave Crenshaw claims the land is part of his holdings, and he and his henchmen try to drive the O'Days off. Cowhand Jerry Wilson and his dog, Dynamite, come to their aid against Crenshaw.

In the Sahara a British Riff chief weds a captured girl to save her from the tribe.

Lieutenant Commander John Byrne of the Naval Secret Service and his partner Pvt. Bill Riggers chase criminal Dr. Sin Fang, who is desperate to find a lost sacred seal. (The fifth and only surviving episode of a six-part serial about an evil mastermind inspired on Sax Rohmer's Dr. Fu Manchu.)

A fearless cowboy comes to the rescue of a beleaguered prospector.

Good cowboy vs. bad cowboy in this romantic adventure.

Steven Bancroft, a young officer in the U. S. Calvary, is given the assignment of ensuring that dirty-work by agents of Spain, Mexico or Russian aren't going to keep statehood-for-California from becoming a reality. Bancroft uses his guns to settle any debates regarding international laws.

Anna runs away from her wealthy father's ranch and becomes a trick rider in a circus to be with her sweetheart, Cal Coney, a circus cowboy, when her father disapproves the match. There she achieves fame as "Anna Montana," but she remains unhappy because Cal refuses to admit that he loves her. Meanwhile, Rawl Souvane, manager of the circus, plans to woo and marry Anna when he preceives that she is wealthy.

When his father is falsely convicted and sentenced to die for a murder committed aboard ship, the man's son signs on as a crewman to discover the real killer and clear his father.

After being dismissed for imitating his boss's voice on radio, former Assistant District Attorney Richard Deming witnesses a store robbery and is taken captive by the criminals. Suspected of the crime, he is sought by the police, but his sweetheart, Marie, convinced of his innocence, enlists the help of two friends, a newspaper reporter and a half-witted detective. Hoping to win the girl's favor, the two go to the gangsters' hideout, encounter a violent gang war, and accidently set off a case of police tear bombs. The police, summoned by Marie, arrive just in time to save the kidnaped attorney.

After returning home to Britain from Nigeria where he has been working, an engineer becomes embroiled in a family melodrama.

Molly White, the new schoolmistress at Silver Creek, makes the acquaintance of Jack Brooks, a wealthy eastern sportsman, when his pedigreed police dog, Dynamite, saves her from serious injury, and they become fast friends.

Special agent Al Langdon pursues elusive gem smuggler Michael Revere. Going undercover, Langdon joins Revere's gang, and in this capacity is obliged to rescue their beautiful hostage, Mary Lacy.

Restored by the George Eastman House in 2001, this 1928 serial was considered a “last hurrah” for the silent-era serial, and brought together some of the biggest names of the era: director J.P. McGowan, actors Francis Ford and Joe Bonomo (a carnival strongman-turned-actor), producer Trem Carr (who would later help found Monogram Pictures), and a slew of silent-era supporting icons such as Ruth Hiatt, Grace Cunard, and more. Chapter names like “The Clutching Claw,” “The Devil’s Dice, “Galloping Fury,” and “The Invisible Hand” offer all one needs to know of the film’s concerns: to promise and deliver as much action and suspense as possible, and move our intrepid hero and heroine from one perilous situation to another. One of the biggest stars of the early silent era and a successful serials director in his own right, Francis Ford was the brother of director John Ford.